Official Bio
I did not grow up in a Christian family. I used to wonder about God very often as a little boy, but no one in my family could answer my questions about Him.
As I got older I never questioned whether or not God existed, but I grew less and less confident that anyone really knew Him or anything about Him. What was He like? Why did He make the world? What is our purpose here? These questions used to tumble around in my head even as a little child of 2 or 3 years old.
As I grew, I experienced the normal joys and disappointments of childhood as my parents were very good to me. Yet deep inside me there was a nagging sadness, and purposelessness. I remember thinking at the age of 10 or 11 years old, “Is this all there is?”, and “Is all I have to look forward to in life growing up, having a family, getting a job, growing old, and then dying?” This thought was singularly vacuous to me. Like a black hole that haunted my mind each and every day.
As I entered middle school this deep question tugged at my heart all the more until one morning I was overcome with a boldness in my spirit.
I can vividly remember coming down to breakfast at the age of 13 and saying to my mother, “Mom, why don’t we go to church?” “I don’t know,” she answered. “Well, if we don’t start going to church, I’m going to pick one, and start going by myself,” I said. “Okay, ahh… I guess we could start going…” “Okay, we’re going this Sunday,” I said as I promptly headed out the door for school.
Looking back on that interchange I can’t imagine what my poor mother was thinking. At the time it seemed like the most normal thing in the world to say, but looking back on it I realize that God had been pursuing me all my life and I was finally beginning to respond to His prompting.
After attending a local church and enrolling in confirmation classes, (where instead of studying the Bible, we only played basketball, and ate a taco dinner every week), I grew disappointed. “When were we going to get to meet God?” I remember thinking. I was beginning to think no one was ever going to be able to tell me what I longed to know about God.
Then one day, as I walked down the main street of our little rural Nebraska town, I noticed my Dad’s old Toyota Celica parked outside the new computer shop that had just opened up. There was no mistaking that car, and so I decided I would pop in to the shop to see what he was doing. As I walked in, I saw him behind the counter with another man soldering mother-boards. “Dad?” “What are you doing?” “Oh Joe’s teaching me how to build computers.” he said. “Oh, okay”, I replied as I walked to the counter.
Then I noticed a large Bible sitting on the countertop. “Hey why do you have that Bible sitting on your counter?” I asked. “Oh, well I’m a Christian, and I read it every day,” he said. “Really?” I replied.
After this I barraged him with so many questions he didn’t know where to start!
Eventually he invited me to simply come out to his house for his son’s birthday that weekend, promising that he’d answer my questions then.
After playing pool for about 15 minutes with his son, I said to him, “Hey, I’ll be right back, but I need to go talk to your Dad about God.” Again, I’m sure this must have seemed rather odd, or even comical to them, but from my perspective I had been waiting my whole life to find out who God was, and if this guy knew the Bible, then I wanted to hear what he had to say.
That evening Joe took me through the Book of Romans, and what many people call ‘The Roman’s Road.’ I can remember him asking me if I understood it, and if I agreed with it? I said that I thought so, but then that was basically the end of the conversation.
A couple of months later I was getting confirmed at a local church, and my parents had gotten me a Bible as a confirmation gift. That night, on Oct. 29th, 1995, I took that Bible up to my room with me and opened it up to Genesis.
I didn’t know it had 66 unique books in it at the time. I simply thought, “Well, if I’m going to read this, I need to start at the beginning.” I got to chapter 3 of Genesis, but since I was only 14, hated to read, and the fact that my parents had bought me a King James Version of the Bible, my attention soon waned. But I had learned of the fall of man, and the fact that God and mankind’s relationship had been broken.
Before giving up for the night, I decided to flip to the back because I had heard that the book of Revelation was interesting. I did so, and began reading. As I got to chapter 3, I read “Because you are lukewarm and neither not nor cold, I will spew you out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:16). Although I know now that this was written to the church of Laodicea, I can distinctly remember the Holy Spirit ‘waking me up’ at that very moment.
All of a sudden all the verses which the computer repairman had shared with me, came flooding back to my memory.
All in a flurry I knew I was a sinner, and had fallen short of God’s standards for Heaven! I knew that the consequence for this was separation from God forever, and I knew that Jesus was my only hope for survival!
I was completely overcome with agreement with God about my condition, and my utter need for the forgiveness that only He could offer me. I closed my eyes and said, “Jesus, I’m scared to death of You. I know I’m a sinner, and I know I deserve Hell! I know You would be right to consign me there forever, but please have mercy on me, and save me!”
When I opened my eyes, everything seemed absurdly ‘normal’, but I knew that I knew that I knew I was different. I knew after all those years what the meaning of life was, and I was so relieved I didn’t know what to do.
Just as a peace that I had never known was flooding my mind, I sensed a deep conviction down within the deepest part of me, that God was calling me to be a pastor.
Shocked, and a bit scandalized (I never really liked the idea of pastors much), I said to Him, “Well, let’s see how this goes and maybe we can talk and revisit that idea later.” I tend to think of God laughing at me in that moment. Not mockingly, but as a Father chuckles at his toddler when he says something cute, but doesn’t know why everyone is laughing.
Well, God knows how to get what He wants from a man, and He got it. It was not but a couple of weeks after that, that I found myself at Student Venture (Campus Crusade for High Schoolers), engrossed in reading the Bible and singing praises to this Jesus who had made Himself known to me through His Word. I had no idea the wild ride I was about to experience!
While attending Cru’s high school ministry, I found myself being invited to lead worship and participate in an evangelistic acting troupe which traveled around performing skits for area churches, and putting on outreaches.
After a year or two of this, my mentor at Cru began asking me to help prepare Bible talks for the various high school groups which were meeting in the surrounding towns. As I traveled to these different groups with my mentor, I began to lead worship, and teach short Bible lessons on a regular basis. This led to being asked to fill the pulpit for area pastors in rural Nebraska who had difficulty finding people from their own congregations, or denominations to preach for them. Oddly, I found myself preaching or teaching from the Bible on a weekly basis for the entirety of my high school career.
All of this led me to follow my initial conviction after coming to faith, that God was calling me into vocational ministry, and specifically into the discipline of preaching and teaching the Bible. So I applied to, and was accepted into an undergraduate double-major degree program in Pastoral Ministry and Bible at Grace University in Omaha, Ne.
While at Grace University I was privileged to be mentored by University faculty and staff as I served as class president my freshman and sophomore years, and as student body president my junior year in student government.
During this time we organized school-wide events, outreaches, and activities with the student body in collaboration with the overseeing faculty that took the time to invest in, and guide us. I gained invaluable lessons in learning to appreciate different backgrounds, traditions, and perspectives in ministry approaches while also gaining meaningful friendships along the way.
During my time at Grace University, I started an evangelistic music ministry group called ‘fROMdUST,’
which wrote and recorded original rock music to bring the gospel into contexts outside the church in a relevant way to the greater Omaha metro area and Midwest region. This ministry garnered enough momentum to win stage appearances alongside national Christian recording artists.
Through this experience I learned invaluable lessons in public speaking, leadership, collaboration, creativity, fiscal management, spiritual accountability, and maintaining unity amidst innumerable ministry challenges.
Although this season of ministry in my life has come to a conclusion, I still enjoy the richest and most cherished Biblical community I have ever known alongside those with whom I shared this ministry. We truly know one another and experienced so much personal growth over the course of this ministry that we were forever changed by it.
God shaped us through one another’s godly influence and encouragement in ways I’ve seldom known elsewhere. We spoke into one another’s lives and learned to collaborate to carry out the ministry in ways that serve me today in both helping me laugh at myself amidst ministry challenges, as well as address them with friendly tact.
I am incredibly grateful to have been a part of this ministry as it was not only wonderful to share the gospel in such a vibrant and creative way, but to do so while learning to fully rely on Jesus together as a group.
I finished out my college years ministering with Campus Life Youth for Christ by launching a new group at Millard West High School in Omaha, Ne.
This was a ‘cold call’ assignment, where I didn’t know any students or have any connections. This made me quite nervous, and I was very concerned if anything would come of it, since I didn’t know how I could make any meaningful inroads to get the ministry up and running. Yet before I knew it, we had over 80 students meeting weekly at a house roughly 3 blocks from campus, and many students trusted Jesus during that time; some of whom I’m still in contact with to this day.
After graduation I married my wife Kellie who had ministered alongside me during my last two years of college. We were married in fall of 2003 as I took my first vocational ministry job as a youth pastor, and worship leader at a church-plant in west Omaha.
I was there for nearly four years and I enjoyed using my musical background and Biblical training to lead the church in worship and the discipleship of youth. I have some of my most cherished memories of vocational ministry when I think back to this time. I enjoyed leading a small group of roughly 25 middle and senior high students—many of whom I am still in contact with—and several of whom are in vocational ministry themselves today.
Following my first church, I responded to a call at a larger church, serving again in the role of youth pastor. The Lord blessed the ministry greatly and I soon found myself filling the pulpit for our senior pastor more and more frequently, while also being invited to participate regularly in providing leadership-oversight for the church.
While this was taking place I began working on a 120-credit Th.M degree from Dallas Theological Seminary. Beginning in 2010 and for the following four years, I spent each school year with my wife and daughter in Dallas going to graduate school full-time while working part-time. Each summer, we returned to the church to fill the pulpit full-time to complete the requirements of my pastoral internship.
Upon graduation with honors from DTS in 2014, I became the primary preaching/teaching pastor of the church throughout the year, regularly preaching three services per Sunday, or onsite at our satellite location. The six years serving in this capacity were an incredibly formative experience, and gave me an excellent preview of what ministering full-time as a lead pastor could be like.
In 2016 I responded to a call to help plant a church called PassageWay, and serve as her lead pastor.
By God’s grace after nearly 7 years, PassageWay grew into a beautiful local expression of the Body of Christ. As the lead pastor I had the chief responsibility of casting vision for the church, carrying the primary Biblical preaching/teaching from week to week, as well as helping to encourage, guide, and equip the staff and volunteer ministry teams of elders and deacons.
It was an amazing journey to see Jesus build His church! What began as a meeting in a public park and historic train depot in the summer of 2016, soon outgrew that space and mirgrated to a former telecommunications building, only to outgrow that space also. Next the church moved to a former High School, and then on Good Friday of 2020 the church purchased a property with 6+ acres of land and a building with the capacity to host roughly 1000.
After seeing PassageWay firmly planted and established I sensed God slowly shifting the burden of my heart and focus to ministry leaders and the unique challenges they face.
God was stirring my spirit with a desire to listen to, encourage, counsel, train, resource, and equip other pastors and ministry leaders to be more confident and competent ministers of His Word. I didn’t know what to do with that burden, but began praying.
About a year later I found myself tentatively considering the prospect of furthering my education towards that goal. With much prayer, reflection, and the encouragement of my wife, I enrolled and was accepted into the doctoral program at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada California. I am now in my third year of studies working on a degree in Advanced Biblical Preaching.
Through this deeply enriching experience I’ve grown increasingly convinced that God is preparing me to invest in, encourage, train, and equip other pastors and ministry leaders through the ministry experiences, gifts, and schooling I have been so blessed to receive.
Over the last several years I had also sought out various ministry mentor relationships with older and wiser pastors, teachers, and professors to grow further in this area. They all encouraged me to prayerfully consider ministry opportunities that were in alignment with my newfound burden to minister to other pastors and ministry leaders.
During this time I began receiving various ministry offers all over the country. But, after prayerfully turning down several opportunities that were akin to my newfound burden but not quite focused where I believed God was calling me, I received and accepted an offer via one of my mentors (Lincoln Murdoch) to fill a position as the Assistant Director for Step Up To Life Ministries headquartered in Omaha, NE.
Now, through Step Up To Life I have the wonderful joy of helping to encourage, resource, train, counsel, comfort, and equip ministry leaders in a variety of ways locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally.
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